Friday, March 21, 2014

BSNYC Gluten-Free Friday Fun Quiz! (Warning: May Contain Gluten)

The problem? Ironically, it's losing money because it's too popular with the New Yorkers who purchase memberships, and the tourists who everyone thought were going to flock to the system and immediately kill themselves in traffic simply aren't taking up the slack:

One issue is that Citi Bike has proved more popular than expected with annual users who generate comparatively little revenue. Some 99,000 people pay $95 a year plus tax to be able to use the bikes for 45 minutes at a time.The potential for far greater revenue, however, is with short-term users. Many of those were expected to be tourists, and they haven't used the bikes nearly as much as officials had anticipated, people familiar with the matter said.

I hate when things are more popular than expected.

As for those short-term users, here's a chart illustrating the problem:

Notice that the number of tourists and other occasional users is quite high in the summer months. Then it decreases significantly during the winter, but shows signs of increasing again as the spring approaches. This is a huge shock to everybody, since until now nobody realized that New York City has these things called "seasons."

I mean, sure, scientists have been talking about "season change" for centuries, but it's mostly been dismissed as liberal nonsense.

Anyway, I expect another Wall Street Journal article sometime in June about the miraculous rebound in Citi Bike ridership.

The other problem is that the bikes wind up all clumped in certain areas and all sparse in others, like the contents of the six month old carton of soy milk in the back of your fridge:

Operational difficulties have also troubled Citi Bike. The task of moving bikes to respond to the patterns of commuters—those who grab a bike in the West Village to Midtown in the morning but may not ride it home at night—has been more cumbersome than expected in New York City traffic. That has raised costs.

I gotta say that is indeed a problem, and it's the reason I've pretty much stopped using the system--I've had too many experiences where I either couldn't find a bike, or I couldn't dock it, or both, and ultimately wound up spending more time than I would have if I'd simply walked. Of course, just as everyone was surprised by the existence of four seasons, they were apparently similarly surprised that New York City has a shitload of traffic, and that spreading Citi Bikes around in huge vans during rush hour is a gigantic inefficient pain in the ass.

Fortunately, there's an easy solution to that, and if Citi Bike wants to pay me to ride the bikes all over the city to the stations where they're needed I'd be more than happy to take the job.

But that's not going to happen, since there's no money for it:

New York's bike-share program is unique among large U.S. cities because it is designed to operate without public dollars, experts said. Programs in Chicago, Boston, Washington, Houston and San Francisco either use local or federal money or both, according to Corinne Kisner, a program manager at the National Association of City Transportation Officials.Citi Bike's revenues come from corporate sponsorships, advertising and membership and usage fees.

Basically, every other form of transport--including all these ferry boats nobody uses (obviously I don't mean the Staten Island ferry, since shitloads of people use that)--gets some kind of subsidy. I don't expect that to happen with bikes, though, since the average person hates bikes and all the wear and tear on the infrastructure they don't cause. Still, I'm not sure I'd want Citi Bike to be publicly funded, since it would make it that much more difficult to play the smugness card in arguments.

Just judging from the title of this post (because that's all I've read) Snobz is familiar with the old "oh yeah sure we offer gluten-free options" hustle common to corporate chain restaurants. NO BIG DEAL ASSHOLES, MY WIFE WILL JUST GET A MIGRAINE IS ALL.

Seriously, we have a bike share program in Houston? I've lived here 12 years and never heard of it. Once you've built a highway that is 16, count 'em 16 lanes wide, I'm not sure that there is anyone left to ride bikes. They're all on the freeway at any given point in time.

eh, top something. Nice banana hammock there, Snot-a-lot. Really, tourist use of citi-bikes went down with 200 feet of snow on the ground and arctic temperatures? Imagine that - gasp!Here is a hint for next winter, replace them all with the Wal Mart fatbike!! Snow will no longer be a problem.

Gyroscope guy sounds like Putin. I half expected him to start deriding all those "Babies who cry," like he did when people dared to criticize how dangerous some of the runs were prior to the Olympics. Gyroscope or no, though, gravity always works on me, cause I'm so damned dense.

Seasons? What a novel concept. We have two of them here, wet and not quite so wet.

45 minutes. There's a problem. Isn't it usually 30 minutes in other cities? Make it 30 minutes and you'll have more bikes in docks. People who want to ride more than 30 minutes should rent a bike or pay extra.

Bamaphred said News article was phoned in by a 5th grader too lazy to get out of bed. - that's how news is made now. Welcome to the dystopian future.

When we finally get around to WWIII with the Chinese, they will bring the entire US military force to its knees with nothing more than a single baggie filled with gluten, and their quest for utter world dominance will be complete.

NEWS FLASH! Craze of Cars Careening into Dunkin Donuts Spreads to Philly - In a shocking turn of events, cars have started careening into Dunkin Donuts stores in a shameless attempt to copy New York drivers. One driver was heard to exclaim, "New Yorkers were doing it, so we had to try."

Citibank should be able to work some derivatives magic, sell bonds based on the expected revenues from dupes/tourists, package those bonds with some Class Z mortgage loan derivatives, buy hi, sell low, issue some fat bonuses, and send us taxpaying fools the bill.

No, No, No! This is a banana holder. Just try and take the banana from that gorilla.

So where is the fat that could be trimmed from your non-commie-pinko bike share program? If capitalism is so great, why can't the masters of the universe at CitiBunk make a program that is too popular make enough money to keep rolling?

And then we taxpayers have to foot the bill for cleaning up after totally clueless, reckless, dim bulb drivers who can't even keep the rubber side off the tops of trains, not to mention trying to engineer and build the infrastructure that would allow those damn reckless dim bulb texting drivers from killing and maiming themselves and others while destroying trains, donut shops, trees, houses, or anything else in their path.

You've gotta love a good boob shot. :)Deadly Fredly - only a little? Well then my work is not done.

Putin on the Ritz - this is true, but the sweet yellow kind gives me potassium and energy to ride the other, better kind. Um, and you don't need Crimea. Just redesign the region so you have your OWN port on the Black Sea. Go on, you're more powerful than God, you can do it.

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About Me

While I love cycling and embrace it in all its forms, I'm also extremely critical. So I present to you my venting for your amusement and betterment. No offense meant to the critiqued. Always keep riding!